Free The Power of Mindful Learning by Ellen J. Langer

that the entire country was once
again ravaged by famine, and one night the children heard their mother talking to their father in
bed. "Everything's been eaten up again. We have
only hay a loaf of bread, but after that's gone, that
will be the end of our food. The children must leave.
This time we'll take them even farther into the forest so they won't
find their way back home."
    When their parents had fallen asleep, Hansel got up, intending
to go out and gather pebbles as he had done the time before, but their
mother had locked the door, and Hansel could not get out.

    Early the next morning the mother came and got the children
out of bed. They each received little pieces of bread, but they were
smaller than the last time. On the way into the forest Hansel
crumbled the bread in his pocket and stopped as often as he could to
throw the crumbs on the ground. Little by little he managed to
scatter all the bread crumbs on the path. The woman led the children even deeper into the forest until they came to a spot they had
never in their lives seen before. `Just keep sitting here, children. If
you get tired, you can sleep a little. We're going into the forest to
chop wood, and in the evening, when we're done, we'll come and
get you."
    Then they fell asleep, and evening passed, but no one came
for the poor children. Only when it was pitch black did they
finally wake up, and Hansel comforted his little sister by saying,
Just wait until the moon has risen, Gretel. Then we'll see the
little bread crumbs that I scattered. They'll show us the way back
home. "
    When the moon rose, they set out but could not find the crumbs,
because the many thousands of birds that fly about in the forest and
fields had devoured them.
    They walked the entire night and all the next day as well, from
morning till night, but they did not get out of the forest. Eventually
they became so tired that their legs would no longer carry them, and
they lay down beneath a tree and fell asleep.
    Hansel and Gretel
    THE BROTHERS GRIMM

    Hansel and Gretel lost sight of the bigger picture. Following bread crumbs on the implicit theory that following pebbles
worked may seem easier than trying to memorize the forest,
but neither strategy offers much control in new circumstances.
Had they actively drawn distinctions and noticed finer points
in their surroundings, as we will see, they might have had an
easier time getting home.
    Students who rely on rote learning may find themselves
similarly helpless. Although the student who dutifully recites
the multiplication tables or the Gettysburg Address may
seem to be a figure from the past, most learning, especially
preparation for tests, is still done by rote. "I know that material so well," an A student exclaims, "I could take that exam
in my sleep." Most students still prepare by memorizing as
many facts as they can from required reading and class notes.
And many, if not most, teachers insist that students know
key information as well as they know the backs of their
hands.

    Memorizing is a strategy for taking in material that has no personal meaning. Students able to do it succeed in passing most
tests on the material, but when they want to make use of that
material in some new context they have a problem. This disadvantage of rote memory applies to all of us, whether we are memorizing textbook information for school, technical information for work, or any other information.

    I remember studying for a test as an undergraduate, memorizing the essential parts of an article by "Rock and Harris," and
getting the question correct on the test. Later that same week
when asked if I had ever read any of Harris's work, I said no.
Had I been asked if I knew the work of "Rock and Harris" I
probably would have replied yes. I learned the names as a package, and that was the way they stayed in my mind. A typical
package, at least for those of my generation, is "Battle of Hastings/1066." I have no